Right Thinking, Right Living

Informal conversation with Master on 27th January 2007 at Tiruppur, India

Q: Last time I was here in ’99. I am living in Seoul, Korea now and I want to serve you in anyway that I can. [inaudible] Whatever is your direction…

Master: Oh no, I can’t give directions.

Q: Okay. I have met a girl there also and I don’t…

Master: So that is the main purpose?

Q: Yes! Yes!

Master: Well, that’s honest enough so… Girls are good because they lead the man in the right direction if they are good. If they are not, they divert you away from everything. So girls can be devils, they can be angels. Which one have you chosen?

Q: I think her heart is good.

Master: Well, all hearts are good!

Q: She has taken three sittings, but…

Master: The problem is not with the heart. Even girls have heads, you know. Though men believe that girls are dumb, they are never dumb. They know much more what they want than the men do.

Q: Can you tell me if she is the right one?

Master: Oh, I don’t know unless I see her or…

Q: I can send you a picture or give you a picture.

Master: Do that. You know, there was a boy in France, about twenty-four years old, and he was literally writing me love letters every week. Absolutely love letters, no holds barred! He was always confused what is constant remembrance. Then after about a year and a half of these ecstatic love letters from him, one day I got a letter profusely thanking me, “Oh, you are the best Master in the world,” and “Wow!” and all this sort of thing, you know. “Today I have discovered what is constant remembrance. Thank you for sending me Sally.” [laughter] I was happy. I said, “Somehow you have to find out.” After six months, the axe fell. “You SOB, you damn fool, you…” everything in the dictionary. “Why did you send her to me, if she was not to be mine?” So I rose and fell, I. He—nothing happened to him.

So girls are—yo-yo, you know. Have you heard of the yo-yo? So beware you are not the yo-yo. There is a classic posture of Vishwamitra. He was a great saint, you know, and he was lured by Indra, who had sent a girl. And then he lost his head. They had a baby—Shakuntala, famous in Indian tradition. When she comes with the baby, he goes like this [gestures in renunciation] you see. Then he realizes what he has lost and what he has gained. Then he has to start all over again his spiritual life, but he makes it.

Not everybody has a second chance. Life is not so long nowadays that we can have a second chance. In those times, it is said they lived to five hundred years, six hundred years, you know. But we are, I don’t know how many, maximum according to the Bible, three score and ten, which means seventy years. And once you have crossed forty, the other thirty years are worth less than ten, in real terms. Because you are going downhill—health, purpose, will, everything. So you are fighting, you know; it’s like every mile you go, you have to do six miles.

So beware! Not of girls, but of what they represent. Now I am sure this will come in the next blog: “Chariji said this…”

At the same time, you must remember, I love girls. No, no, I mean it. Because if I was a conventional thing you know like an Indian sannyasi and all that, there are many margas [paths] in India where women are not allowed. There is one in Gujarat—no women. I know women don’t have it all their own way all the time. But the men are more often duped because… because.

So Korea or anywhere else, geography doesn’t determine it. “Oh, she’s young and innocent.” History doesn’t determine it. “She’s a Jew, she’s a Christian, she’s Polish,” that doesn’t determine it. What determines it? Your heart. If your heart is sound, steadfast, purpose-oriented, then any girl will be good to you. But if your heart is wavering you know, like the Italians (any Italians here?) “Mama Mia!” they say, you know. Then they are like the hunters who take a pot shot at every tiger without knowing how to shoot, and the tiger comes from behind and cut. So they are really mama mias. I think that’s enough about this lovely subject.

I am giving more and more material for blogs every time I open my mouth. I think the only way to stop that is to throw so much at them they don’t know what to do.

Q: Master! I would love it if you could talk about what is real charity. How to serve humanity? You know you were talking in the CREST about charity.

Master: About Chariji?

Q: No, charity!

Master: Oh, charity! [laughter]

Q: I thought she was asking about real Chariji.

Master: We all thought.

Q: And I thought it is a good question, too.

Master: Bad question. You don’t want to be anything, you want to have a heart—a real human heart, that covers everything. Because if it’s a real human heart, there is love, there is mercy, there is compassion, there is giving. Without that, there is only lust, hatred, corruption, greed, selfishness; even in so-called love—greed [is there]. You understand? So the heart is the thing.

Charity doesn’t mean giving money to beggars and putting money in the church—that is for rich people, just to prove to themselves that they are…

Charity! You know there is a very good story I like, about an Indian musician. He was a Muslim, and when India was divided and Pakistan came into existence, he went to Pakistan. But after six months he decided it was not for him, so he came back, and he landed in Bombay. Those days we did not have flights. When he arrived in Bombay, his well-wishers (the people who admired his music, who loved him), they presented him a purse of twenty-two thousand rupees—a lot of money in those days. And the story says that when he was giving his first performance after returning to India, one young man—a little troubled, perspiring, anxious—he came to him and said, “Ustaad!” They call them Ustaad, you know. “Pranam,” and he said, “Yes, my son, what is it?” He said, “I have no money even for my next meal.” So this musician put his hand into his pocket, took out everything, and gave that twenty-two thousand rupees to that boy.

That is not charity, that is human kindness—give all you have. So when you read in the Bible that Jesus said, “Sell all you have and come with me,” he meant give everything. And don’t say, “I will give you five rupees. Ten rupees to you. Oh, I don’t like her—nothing,” not like that, that’s no human heart. Human heart does not question what is it that you deserve. Because, if we were to get what we deserve, none of us would get anything. Not a Berber, not a Brahmin, and not a (whatever he is) soul, living in Seoul. You understand? So this is Sahaj Marg, as Babuji told me, where there is real giving without thinking. Nobody thinks here what are your antecedents, where do you come from, what have you done in your life, are you fit to be a disciple at all?

“Oh, I am from Canada.”

“Okay, come in.”

“I am from Japan. Ohayou gozaimasu [good morning].”

Have any one of you been asked what you have been in this life, before you came here? Whether you are a sinner or a saint, how many times you have been married, how many love affairs you have had—did anybody ask? This is charity, because without thinking you are accepted; without thinking you are allowed to remain; without thinking or assessment you are given without measure, without limit. Yet, people say, “Oh, how judgemental! Chariji must not talk of American habits,” like I spoke the other evening. “He must not talk of Europeans; he must not talk of the Nihonjin; he must not talk of course of India, because he says he’s an Indian and he’s talking about us like this?”

Here there are human beings, whether Indian or European or crustacean (You know what is a crustacean? I hope you don’t, because they don’t belong in the same category. They are called molluscs, you know.) They are all the same. For me there is no Indian, there is no European, there is no American; but there are Indian problems, American problems, European problems, Japanese problems, African problems.

We have an African sister who lives in Switzerland. After many years she wanted to go to Africa, and to serve her people. I said, “You’ll find it extremely difficult, because your people, I am sorry to say, are not developed. They are primitive; they believe in voodoo; they are superstitious.” Oh, she got so angry she almost threw a cup of coffee at me. Nice hot Swiss coffee! She was terribly angry. She came back after one and a half years and she did something which she had never done before—she touched my feet. I said, “What is this? Dirty feet of a dirty Indian.” “Chariji!” she said, “You were perfectly right.” I said, “My dear, I don’t tell you what is right or wrong, I tell you what is it,”you see. This is the situation, it’s like a doctor saying, “You have a tumour here, you have a tumour here, in between I don’t know if there is something more. What have you been doing with your life?” And the patient gets up and says, “I’ll find another doctor. You are judgemental.” So we have to distinguish between judgement and diagnosis. Okay?

So when I say something about Americans, they are diagnostic, things to be corrected. And how to correct? Right thinking, right living. There are only two things, you know. We do because we think, and we think because we have trained ourselves to think in particular ways. So in Sahaj Marg we are told to think of only one thing at a time—the divine light in the heart, in meditation. That gives us slowly the ability to use our mind, to think as we want it to think. Now, we think as the mind wants us to think. You see the difference? This is all that Sahaj Marg is. It is nothing more; fortunately, it is nothing less. It is a great thing to be able to use your mind instead of allowing your mind to use you.

You know I saw a movie which was called… what is that famous hotel in the U.S.? It was the Waldorf; The Hong Kong Waldorf or The Shanghai Waldorf or something. There is a nice pretty girl in London. Photography is her hobby. She is taking photographs everywhere, and there one man is following her. And the inevitable happens; they are in bed. Then she thinks she is in love with him, but she is going to Hong Kong for a job. No, I am sorry; she is going to Australia, to see her parents or whatever. And this fellow (they have been spending a month in London) he says, “I will come with you to Australia. I love you so much. I can’t let you alone.” And before they leave he presents her a beautiful camera, in a rubber bag, extra lenses, and she is enchanted. And one evening when she’s having her shower, he opens the case and puts in eight packets of drugs, I don’t know which powder, screws them down nicely. And they pass through Turkey, they go to Istanbul, they go here, they go there, they come to Delhi, to Agra, to Benares, Calcutta; they take a flight to Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, they spend a week and they are about to board a flight for Sydney. And they have two seats side by side, because they are lovers. But unfortunately when the baggage is going through, one sniffer dog throws her bag down, and it is this camera case. So they take it inside and the sniffer dog “bow-wow-wow”—and they see it is a camera case, but one fellow brings a small screwdriver, opens the top, inside—Voilà! Drugs, which had not been discovered for four weeks till then you see. But Hong Kong is tough; to deal in drugs in Hong Kong the penalty is death. So they find out from the tag whose it is, and she’s arrested. She says, “My companion is with me.” And they say, “What is your seat number?” but he has cleverly gone and changed the seat. So you see what we can be led into. Then she is there in prison for about seven years awaiting the punishment, until a friendly British advocate somehow comes to know of her, and I stopped seeing after that. It was so sordid, life in the prison for a woman, so sordid.

Today, love, as you people know it, is a dangerous thing. You are prepared to follow a girl to Seoul, to Shanghai, to Helsinki, back, and again to Toronto. But you don’t want to follow your spiritual guide.

Q: Master, I do. I want to do the work for you. And so I am asking you directly, because I have this opportunity now, to ask you if I can serve you in the capacity…

Master: My dear young brother, between a man and his destiny, there are only temptations. In what form the temptations come, I don’t know. And maybe one in a billion can really overcome those temptations and still be on track. Work—I can give you any work you want. Will you be able to work? I mean, how many Europeans are not here, where the girl has a husband who doesn’t want her to go to satsangh. They say, “No. You love me or you love that Indian, old fella?”

“No, no, I love you honey.”

“Then prove it. Stay here, stay at home.”

“Oh, Chariji, I cannot come.”

“Why not?”

“My boyfriend.”

Same thing with the men; he will not come because the girl says, “If you love me, you will not go for satsangh today.” Proof! And this is almost something you know to do with Europe, and, I don’t know, something in the European blood!

There is a movie I saw about a Roman emperor in Nero’s time—Deborah Kerr and somebody else. This girl is a slave in the house of one of the senators of Rome, an old man and his wife. But they have given her her freedom officially and they are all secretly Christians. The nephew is a consul of Rome and he is a great commander and he wins victories after victories, and he is coming back after one of the victories. He stops near their house, they encamp, because next day they must all be properly dressed, shaved, clean, to go to the emperor, Nero. This fellow enters his uncle’s house and he decides he must sleep with this girl, thinking she is a slave, you know. Slaves are meant for that purpose—anybody, anywhere, any time. But she refuses, and he is such a powerful consul, whatever, and he is angry, he says, “Nobody has ever refused. Me? You refuse?” “Nothing doing!” she says. Then he wants to do something. He goes to Caligula, Caligula is throwing a party in the evening and he whispers in his ear, “There is a girl your majesty should look at.” “Your divinity” they say in the movie. So she is ordered to be brought and the Praetorian guards go and bring her. And she is of course bathed and dressed and perfumed and everything and brought into court. He thought he would get her from the emperor as a prize for his victories. But the emperor looks and he says, “Not bad, even for the emperor’s bed.” But this nephew has an uncle who is a close person to Caligula himself. He says “Your Divinity, this girl? She is too narrow in the hips for your Divinity.” And he says “Ah! You are right, she is too narrow in the hips.” Then one day he follows her on his own and finds she goes to a place and there Peter is giving a lecture. Now he comes to know she is a Christian and he comes to her room and there is a wooden cross and he throws it down on the floor, stabs it with his consul’s boots, and he says, “No man shall come between you and me. Not even your God!”

What to say? I mean such a thing would never have happened in an Indian movie. Of course, our men also have problems with their women and vice versa, and sometimes they hate God for coming between them, but not to the extent of cursing God and crushing his picture with a boot.

So there is something wrong with the old temperament or the way the culture has developed. It’s a tough problem and all of you have to help yourselves, and help your brothers and sisters in your countries if spirituality is to enter your lands, the heart of your peoples and even your governments, because some of the governments are totally against, you know. They have what is called a cult; I don’t know what is a cult. So they have a black book of cults—governments! And Shri Ram Chandra Mission has a proud place there! And we are trying to…

So, my dear friend, it is not easy. You must not set your work along with your girl and say, ‘this’ or ‘this’. ‘This’ if ‘this’ comes with ‘this’—yes. If not, she goes. Do you have a heart which will permit that? It will? Well, I don’t know, but I hope you are right—for yourself, not for me.

My Mission and I don’t require workers. I am making bold to make this statement today—we don’t need workers. People who come, offer themselves; I accept, I give them work, I trust them, I believe in them, I hope for them, and I pray for them. Not because she must work for me in Canada without being diverted by six boyfriends—that’s her problem; but because if she allows that to happen, she is destroying her spiritual possibilities, not the future, the future doesn’t exist yet. Possibilities are there—here is rice, here is oil, here is a stove, here is butter, here is bread, I can eat. But if in a fit of anger I throw all that away, I can’t eat—I’m only hurting myself. I have no risks; I am in a no-risk situation. Because I have billions to choose from, pick from, and as you go they will come. You know like water in the river, it keeps flowing but it’s always full.

For me, it’s no problem. If you ask for work and you accept it, will you use it for your good, for the good of others around you? Or will you throw away this opportunity for a mere girl, or for a mere boy in the case of women. It’s your decision, it’s your choice, it’s your future.

My Master ordered me to serve and he told me, “I do not judge. You work, without thinking of failure or success. You keep working.” Like a train, it starts somewhere, goes to the end of its journey and stops. It doesn’t worry about how many passengers were there or whether there were any passengers at all. I have seen in Denmark, buses at five thirty in the morning going from Aarhus to Silkeborg—no passenger. Beautiful Volvo buses, not a passenger, but it is scheduled and European governments, they stick to their duty to their people. “Is there a six thirty bus?” “Yes.” “Any passengers?” “Not in the last nine months.” So they meet to discuss whether it should run. “Denmark is a great country. Our people must have a bus when they want it. It will run.” Day after day I have seen it going empty. In India what happens? It’s a poor country. They will announce a bus from Coimbatore to Salem at nine o’clock. Nice white people like you come there, “Ah, nine o’clock.” Nine fifteen, nine thirty—first two passengers come. Nine forty-five—ten more come. You go politely because you are trained to be polite. There is no natural politeness, believe me. You are trained to be polite, you are trained to be courteous, you are trained to wait—seething inside, but smiling outside. He says, “Madam, I have ten seats vacant. I cannot run half bus.” “Yes, but ten o’clock it says.” “Yes, yes, it says, if people are there. What will I do running an empty bus?” “Yes, but in Denmark the bus goes without passengers.” “Then, madam, I suggest you go back to Denmark.” [laughter] Isn’t it?

So people say all bad things about India: They have no sense of time; they are not punctual; buses don’t run on time. Trains—oh, yes, but somewhat like that. If a train is to go at ten, it goes at ten forty-five, eleven thirty, doesn’t matter but it will go.

So there is a famous story that when Indira Gandhi was the prime minister, she was very angry that India had such a reputation. So she called a cabinet meeting and said, “We must change India’s image. Suggest.” She was treating the cabinet ministers like schoolboys. “Your suggestion: we will call in a committee of experts.” “From where?” “From everywhere in the world.” “Wonderful.” “Where do we start?” “USA—technologically advanced; Japan—morally advanced, civilized people; Russia—poor people, but they know how to do things.” So she evolved a committee of fifty-two experts from all over the world, called them for a committee meeting, and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you one year to study the condition in India, and then you’ll report to me with your suggestions how to change the face of India and its name outside.” “Yes, Madame.”

And they were all very happy, because, “Oh! Prime Minister of India, you know. She wants to change the way of India, and Indians, and its image. What an opportunity!” So the German came, “Ja, aber.” Aber means but. The French came, “Ouioui, mais.” means the same thing: yes yes, but. And there were a group of ‘buts’. At the end of one year, they came to report, and Indira Gandhi said, “Ladies and gentlemen, your findings, please. First concise, then in detail.” So the spokesman stood up, a short Japanese like a sensei, eighty-two years old. He bowed, and spoke in Japanese to his colleague, because in Japan the expert never speaks—their culture. So Indira Gandhi was impatient, “Yes, yes, come on, quickly translate.” “Madame, so and so wishes to congratulate your country and you.” She said, “Why?” He said, “It is the finding of this committee that in India it’s the only land where God truly exists.” She was inspired, you know, Indira Gandhi, “My country, the only country where God really exists! Our rishis have said this; our gurus have said this, though I have not believed it myself.” She said, “How did you come to that conclusion?”

So the engineer stood up, he says, “You don’t find a single tap in a single house in India which does not leak. Yet there is water everywhere.” Electrical engineer, “Madame, your wires are hanging. They are not put on the walls. Every switch you touch, you can get electrocuted, but there is electricity everywhere.” Railway people, “Madame, yours is the only country where the train runs on time.” “Oh?” “Yes, but you know, it may be yesterday’s. [laughter] Yesterday’s 9:45 am train is running today at 9:45 am, exact.” Like this, they all said you know, “And therefore we conclude that India is the only land where God exists, because without God your country could not exist.”

Therefore, for the only thing that you can find really in India, you all come here. Because perhaps this is the only thing you don’t find in your countries, excuse my saying it. You have gods in churches, you have them in all places of worship, very rich places; you drive up in your limousines and your Mercedes-Benz and what not; well-dressed, well-perfumed, shaved, genuflect when you get in. Thirty minutes later you are out, your weekly duty done. God where He was, you where you are, and the twain rarely meet. You understand?

So, my Master said, “Religions have no God, God has no religion.” Find Him in the only place where you can find Him if you look, that is here—in the heart. Here you are sure of finding Him because without Him you would not exist. Without God India would not exist. This is the only secret that the Indian knows—that God is here. But he follows the rest of the world in not looking here, but in looking to Europe, looking to America, looking at pound notes, dollar notes, greenbacks, enticed by them. He goes to Arabia, beautiful horses, beautiful camels and, of course, beautiful Arabian women. He goes to Poland—same charms, zloty is it, your currency in Poland? Czech, oh, wonderful; Germany, mama mia! What to say of Germany?—kultur! And Denmark, such simple people—they laugh, they are friendly, they don’t refuse Sahaj Marg, but politely don’t accept.

So this is the story of today’s world. Let me assure you, God is everywhere, not only in India. Let me assure you, God is in every heart, not only in Indian hearts. Only thing in India, we don’t have money to travel, or places of worship to go to comfortably, or come out alive. So we are forced to look into our hearts, therefore India has more of spirituality than the rest of the world; there is no other reason—no arcane reason, no esoteric reason, no sacred reason.

So I urge all of you to follow Sahaj Marg faithfully, for your interest. Babuji once said when he was asked, “Why are you making preceptors outside India? Because nobody else has had the courage so far do it.” He said, “I don’t want them to come to India for spirituality. It must be available to them where they are. Therefore, I trust these people who come to me and say, ‘I want to work.’ I give them work because I don’t want them working for me or my people, I want them working for their people, for themselves. If this also they will not do, God help this world.”

Thank You. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak so much.

Q: I’ve noticed that there is a lot of crystal here on this land. And I was wondering if that had anything to do with you picking this as the celebration site.

Master: No, no, we don’t pick by material things. We go where we are guided, let us say.

Q: Because I was told that when you have lots like that, it increases the vibration of the place.

Master: Yes, but we are going beyond vibration now.

Q: It’s very interesting. Each evening is completely different. Is it because of no planning?

Master: His plan. When we plan, His plan doesn’t work. So, good night everybody.